Wait, That’s How it Ended?

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Glass (2019)

Written by Tom Fortner

I have a HUGE soft spot for M. Night Shyamalan. Many of his films, such as The Sixth Sense, The Village, Signs, and Split, were some of the earliest “scary” movies that I was exposed to. And boy did I eat them right up.

 After I watched Split and discovered it was a SPOILER secret sequel to Unbreakable, that meant I had to go see Glass when it came out in theaters. So, my dad and I set out on a blustery, wet January day and were blessed with a banger of a film.

Wait, That’s How it Ended?

I thing that I love about this film is how it ends the trilogy, that it doesn’t really feel like a traditional ending. In fact, the trilogy as a whole is pretty unorthodox.

First of all, the gap between the release of Unbreakable and Split is 16 years, which is why it was such a shock that they were related. Both of those films are extremely different in their tone and respective genres;Unbreakable is like a dramatic, realistic comic book super hero story and Split is more akin to a slasher/thriller film. 

Glass, then, is harder to categorize. The nearest I can get is like a modern One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest because of the setting in the mental hospital and the presence of Dr. Ellie Staple, the head doctor and main antagonist (in fact, Sarah Paulson would go on to play the dreaded Nurse Ratched from Cuckoo’s Nest in the show Ratched on Netflix).

All this to say, as an ending, Glass isn’t what you’d expect. Our three protagonists, if you can really call them that, are stuck in a mental hospital for most of the runtime. There are no huge, earth-shattering stakes at hand. Instead, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and James McAvoy are just trying to escape. And let me tell you why it’s awesome.

The Brightest Gaslight

The film revolves around one central question that Dr. Staple asks the three men: are your superpowers real or just in your head? It’s a shattering question, but also one that might seem obvious. We’ve seen two movies of these guys doing their thing, of course they have superpowers. Right?

This is why I love the concept of this film. For the ending of a trilogy to literally call into question the validity of the previous two films is crazy risky. But I think it pays off. Without giving away the ending I can confidently say that the film goes in incredibly interesting directions.

This central question provides the landscape for possibly the best scene in the film, one composed nearly entirely of dialogue, something I find insane for a film about men with superpowers. As Dr. Staple gaslights the three men, I even found myself questioning their sanity, and I’m on their side! 

So without further ado, enjoy this snippet from that scene!

Today’s Scene